Search Results for: office

August 20, 2013

Leave it out. UK workers are skipping their break from the office

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

The problem with the UK holiday season is that you never know where you are with your contacts. While one chunk of the population is away on leave, the other half is beavering away, and carry on sending out tons of emails, which the other half are forced to plough through when they return to the office. Maybe we need to follow the example of the Italian office furniture manufacturer which emails out an annual reminder during the last week of July that its offices will be shut for the whole of August, when traditionally, most of Italy takes a break. Not so the Brits, where, according to new research, even workers entitled to a break, are reluctant to take time off. More →

August 1, 2013

Predicting the future of the office means looking at what is happening now

by Charles Marks • Comment, Facilities management, Furniture, Workplace, Workplace design

Futurology is notoriously a mug’s game. Especially when it comes to making predictions about technology. Just ask Ken Olson, the founder of DEC who in 1977 pronounced that ‘there is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home’. Or Bill Gates himself who once claimed that Microsoft ‘will never make a 32 bit operating system’. Most recently Steve Ballmer, a billionaire executive said in 2007 ‘there’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.’ But mone of these retrosepctively viewed dodgy predictions should make us blind to those that we know will certainly come true, especially those based on what we know is happening in the present.

July 25, 2013

New Government department to focus on FM and office supplies procurement

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Furniture, News, Public Sector

The UK Government’s latest attempt at developing a centralised public sector procurement department was unveiled by the Cabinet Office yesterday. The Crown Commercial Service (CCS) has been set an annual budget of up to £12 billion to secure a range of goods and services including facilities management and office supplies. It has a target of saving some £1 billion each year by working across a range of government departments to take advantage of a shared purchasing function. The announcement follows last week’s report from a committee of MPs into the failings of the current procurement setup in Whitehall. More →

July 24, 2013

News Corp move marks largest Central London office letting agreement in 8 years

by Sara Bean • Company news, Facilities management, News, Property

In the largest letting in Central London to be agreed in the last eight years, News Corp is to move its entire operation to all 17 floors of the Place, next door to the Shard at London Bridge Quarter. The Place, like The Shard, is designed by Renzo Piano and comprises 430,000 sq ft of high quality offices, much of which utilises natural light. The move will see staff of News UK, Dow Jones and HarperCollins housed together for the first time once relocation to the new site begins in the summer of 2014.

July 22, 2013

Green shoots detected for UK regional office rental markets

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

There is evidence of improving fortunes for the UK’s regional office markets, latest figures suggest. CBRE has revealed national rental value grew by 1.7 per cent over the second quarter of this year with offices across all UK regions performing well, and none recording a drop in rents. The highest rate of rental growth over the last twelve months, as we reported earlier this month remains that of Central London at 5 per cent (and 1.7 per cent for the last quarter), but a number of the regions outside London and the South East have started to record rental growth for prime offices, whereas until recently the general trend has been down.

July 19, 2013

Dual source lighting schemes illuminate the way ahead for office design

by Shane Cohen • Comment, Facilities management, Lighting, Workplace design

Too bright, too dull, too much glare – lighting (alongside air conditioning) is often one of the most contentious factors in a workplace. Office workers need illumination to read, write, type and interact. Yet many workplaces get it wrong and fail to consider the downsides of poor lighting, and as such staff will suffer from eye strain, headaches and postural problems, leading to sick days, not to mention lost productivity and mistakes. Eighty per cent of office workers experience at least one negative effect from poor quality lighting, according to researchers Bruskin Goldring, and 68 per cent of employees complain about the light in their offices, according to a study by the American Society of Interior Designers.

July 12, 2013

New joint venture formed to capitalise on booming London Office market

by Sara Bean • Company news, News, Property

A 50:50 joint venture partnership to capitalise on the thriving London office market has been formed by Hermes Real Estate Investment Management Ltd and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. CPPIB is investing £173.9 million to acquire a 50 per cent interest from Hermes’ BT Pension Scheme’s (BTPS) existing portfolio, which comprises 550,000 sq ft of high quality offices, retail and ancillary accommodation, primarily located in London’s West End. Graeme Eadie, Senior Vice-President and Head of Real Estate Investments for CPPIB, said: “We are pleased to be partnering with BTPS and Hermes on this unique opportunity to invest in a high quality, well-diversified portfolio of office properties in prime Central London locations.”

July 12, 2013

The challenge in Silicon Alley is providing the right quantity and quality of office space

by Charles Marks • Comment, Facilities management, Property, Workplace design

News emerges from BNP Paribas that the most dynamic occupiers in Western European property markets belong to the technology, media and telecoms (TMT) sector and that the most important market in the region is London. This comes as no surprise given the plans of Google to move to its new home in King’s Cross and the focus on developments in Tech City. But the same hothousing of TMT businesses is also evident in the area Prime Minister David Cameron has referred to as Silicon Alley, a cluster of businesses running alongside the M4 originally clustered between Reading and Swindon but now extending as far as Bristol. Companies that have found a home in the area include the likes of Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, Ericsson, Vodafone, O2, Citrix, Dell, Huawei, Lexmark, LG, Novell, Nvidia, Panasonic, SAP and Symantec not to mention the countless other smaller businesses, consultants and freelancers that share this hothouse.

July 11, 2013

Personalised design and office plants proven to boost wellness and performance

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Workplace, Workplace design

Allowing staff to make design decisions in a workspace enhanced with office plants can increase wellbeing and wellness by as much as 47 per cent, increase creativity by 45 per cent and increase productivity by 38 per cent, new research has revealed. Visitors at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show were challenged to take part in the study which measured their creativity, happiness and productivity as they experienced a range of different workspace designs. The findings, which would be expected to translate to a significant increase in business profitability, confront the popular belief that plants and art are an unnecessary or even wasteful element of the business environment. Results from this and related scientific investigations indicate that across all measures of psychological comfort and business performance, the managerially popular flexible, controlled, lean office, is consistently inferior to a space enriched by the design decisions of people who work there.

July 10, 2013

UK-based office buildings shortlisted for World Architecture award

by Sara Bean • Architecture, News, Workplace design

One Eagle Place – Piccadilly

Two UK-based office buildings, Botanic House in Cambridge designed by Formation Architects and One Eagle Place by Eric Parry Architects have been shortlisted in the “completed office” category of the World Architecture Festival awards, the world’s largest architectural festival and awards competition dedicated to celebrating and sharing architectural excellence from across the globe. The Botanic House scheme, which was completed in June 2012 is contained in a seven storey “lens shaped” building which provides a generous office rental space of 600 m2 (6,460 sqft) floorplates per floor, while One Eagle Place renews an urban block in the heart of Piccadilly. A video of the Botanic House project can be seen on the Formation Architects website and you can read the complete WAF shortlist here.

July 9, 2013

First “green-rise” commercial office building announced for Los Angeles

by Sara Bean • Architecture, Environment, News, Property

High-rise buildings tend to evoke a love-hate response, and being green is usually not a strong feature. However a new high-rise is being planned in California which aims to join the handful of tall buildings in North America to achieve the U.S. Green Buildings Council’s LEED Platinum certification. The 37-storey Century City Center will integrate the best new engineering and technological practices and innovations to deliver the first new build LEED Platinum “green-rise” in Los Angeles and Southern California. It promises, say developers JMB Realty Corporation, to effectively create a new benchmark in sustainable performance for the commercial office market in America’s second-largest urban region.

July 3, 2013

Two separate reports highlight thriving London office market

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Property

Holborn Circus

The London office market continues to thrive according to two new reports from property consultancies CBRE and BNP Paribas Real Estate. According to the CBRE survey, take-up of Central London office space in the second quarter of 2013 increased by 32 percent compared with the previous quarter while, according to BNP Paribas, the take up of central London offices in the first half of 2013 rose by nearly a quarter 24 percent to 6.02m sq ft compared with the same period in 2012, while activity rose by around a third (31 percent) to 3.08m sq ft in the second quarter of the year compared with the second quarter of 2012. CBRE report that there were three deals for offices over 100,000 sq ft in the period covered and eight deals over 50,000 sq ft, the highest number since Q4 2010.